Among the armour, weapons and campfires at our Medieval Living History Weekend were all sorts of details that caught our attention. Over the next few weeks, we’re taking a closer look at three of them – something made, something fired and something rather more feared. First up, a working medieval loom. The example visitors saw at our Medieval Living History Weekend didn’t come from a museum or a prop store. It was built by Stewart, one of The Beaufort Companye’s reenactors as an over-winter project, using images and sources from the 15th Century to work out how it should be constructed and how it would have been used.
It’s a smaller version of the looms used commercially, which could have been around three times as wide and built into the structure of a weaver’s house.
Watching the loom at work gives you a good idea of the skill involved. The long threads running through it are the warp, while the weft passes from side to side. Foot pedals operate the heddle, separating the warp threads to create a gap known as the shed. The shuttle passes through this gap and, as the process is repeated, the cloth slowly begins to take shape.
The weaving process was only one stage. Once removed from the loom, the woollen cloth still needed to be wetted and repeatedly worked, helping the fibres knit more closely together and creating a denser, more useful fabric. It could then be dyed before being passed to a tailor and made into clothing.
There’s a real group effort behind the process too. Members of The Beaufort Companye spin wool from sheep belonging to fellow reenactors, and between them they can demonstrate much of the journey from shearing and spinning through to weaving and the finished garment.
For visitors watching the loom at work, it’s a chance to see one small part of the considerable amount of time, knowledge and skill that sat behind the clothes people wore in the 15th Century.
Explore more from our Medieval Living History series:
- FEARED: Crime punishment and some rather unpleasant objects
- FIRED: Technology behind a 15th century gun